Re:Gender works to end gender inequity by exposing root causes and advancing research-informed action. Working with multiple sectors and disciplines, we are shaping a world that demands fairness across difference.

Opening Pathways to Women’s Leadership

Claremont Graduate University

150 E. 10th Street, Claremont, CA

NCRW’s network, including academic, nonprofit, philanthropic, business, and policy leaders, gathered to focus on the status of women’s leadership in multiple sectors. The conference identified best practices, as well as generated recommendations and next steps for advancing women's leadership across sectors. The Conference Agenda follows.

In 1983, Sally Ride became the first American woman in space. She blasted off aboard Challenger, culminating a long journey that started in 1977 when the Ph.D. candidate answered an ad seeking astronauts for NASA missions.

According to her official biography, by the time Ride decided to apply to become an astronaut, she had already received degrees in physics and English and was on her way to a Ph.D. in physics from Stanford University.

Japan's world champion women's football team took exception to flying economy while their male counterparts sat in business class on a flight to Europe for the Olympics. The Japan Football Association said the men flew in business because they are professionals.

The women's team was assigned seats in premium economy for the 13-hour flight to Paris while the nation's under-23 men's team was up front on the same flight.

"It should have been the other way around," 2011 FIFA women's world player of the year Homare Sawa told Japanese media after arriving in the French capital. "Even just in terms of age we are senior."

Basketball Australia says it will review its travel policy for national teams after complaints that the men flew business class to the Olympics while most of the women sat in premium economy.

The women's team is by far the most successful of the two, having won silver medals at the last three Olympics. The men, who will be led in London by San Antonio Spurs point guard Patty Mills, have never won an Olympic medal.

The Olympics have not even started, yet their faces are already inescapable. Step on to the London Underground, open a newspaper, turn on the television, and the women of 2012 are staring out at you.

Jessica Ennis, Rebecca Adlington, Victoria Pendleton: their names are becoming as familiar as those of Premiership footballers. The queen is Ennis, the heptathlete who is already the unofficial face of the Games, and whose lucrative sponsorship deals are expected to bring her riches of close to £1m before she even steps on to the track.

It is already being whispered about by sports pundits and Olympic officials alike: our female competitors look set to do the unthinkable and claim more medals than our male athletes for the first time, toppling them from the top of the British podium.

The story in the pan-Arab daily newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat – an important media tool for Saudi rulers – said Saudi male athletes have qualified to compete in track, equestrian and weightlifting at the games that start in less than three weeks.

There is no "female team taking part in the three fields," the report said Sunday, quoting an unidentified Saudi official. He said no female athlete had taken part in qualifying events in Saudi Arabia, which severely restricts women in public life.

Saudi leaders have been under pressure to end the practice of sending all-male teams to international competitions. They could face IOC sanctions after the London Games if women are excluded from the country's Olympic team.

The Saudi Embassy in London said two weeks ago that women who qualify will be allowed to compete. Last week, IOC President Jacques Rogge said he remains optimistic the Gulf kingdom will send women to the games for the first time.